Why People Become Internet Trolls

The absence of nonverbal feedback leads to an “empathy deficit,” and this is what sociopaths suffer from.

If someone says something negative in person and makes you cry, he/she will possibly feel uncomfortable. Unless they're psychopaths, your misery will generate an empathic response and lead them to have mercy. If someone tweets something negative and makes you cry, no amount of emojis can transmit the image of a crying person. If there is no social cue to evoke an empathic response, they might continue their negative assault.

This means a temporary loss of a person's identity leading to behavior that is conflicting with their character. Anonymity offers protection from real-world social repercussions, and this has profound effects on human behavior.

If a lack of nonverbal cues is what makes us detached from the other person’s suffering, deindividuation is what makes us detached from the awareness of our misconduct.

When we denounce trolls as intrinsically malicious people, we limit our understanding of what may trigger these behaviors.

Trolling is somewhere in the grey between prosocial human and antisocial primate. Ultimately, our disposition for antisocial behavior in the real world is likely to predict similar online behavior.

• Use anonymity only where it is necessary.
• Foster empathy consciously, because it doesn’t come naturally to internet-based interactions.
• Awareness of how we respond to distasteful comments can create space between us and our behavior.